Black Skies (28 page)

C
hapman made his first call to the Secret Service. The top priority had to be to save the President, if possible.

He, along with everyone else in the office, contacted government agencies, then radio and TV stations, then airports and then hospitals. Once the most urgent calls had been made, they all took the time to call their families. Rose was brave and resourceful, as usual. She was frightened, but she kept her head and took his instructions down.

Chapman was on the speakerphone with a head nurse at an ICU when the blast hit. The phone flashed blue, along with every other piece of electronic equipment in his line of sight. He heard screams and the sound of shuffling in the outer office. Within seconds, candles were lit—some people had evidently been prepared.

Chapman sat back in his chair. As the adrenaline subsided, the full fatigue, stress, and horror of the past day set in. He heard people crying in the outer office. He slumped off his chair to the floor and leaned against his desk. He focused on steady breathing as a way of keeping from falling apart.

He heard a delicate knock on his door, but he didn’t have the energy to respond. The door creaked open and light footsteps came around his desk. The shadow of Cynthia Gillespie loomed before him.

“Buck,” she said in a voice that tried to be comforting but ended up sounding fragile. She lowered herself until she was sitting on the floor with him.

“I’m scared,” she whispered.

He nodded, as a way of saying,
so am I.

“I need you close,” she said. He moved over so that she could sit next to him, her back against his desk. He took her hand in his. She shifted her body so that she could face him. In the darkness, he could see her eyes, wide and frightened. She kissed him.

“Don’t say no,” she whispered into his ear. “I need this right now.”

“I won’t,” he whispered back, and kissed her, getting lost in her warm, soft lips.

T
he sun was high in the sky. Sergeant Dwayne Davenport looked out the window of his Humvee into the mountainous, rocky terrain of the Kunar province of Afghanistan. It was a routine patrol, filled with both boredom and dread, typical of the war, which had bursts of violence interspersed with long stretches of absolutely nothing.

Looking into the distance, he thought he could see—no, it definitely was a person, a man, dressed in rags, running and motioning to them.

“Stop the car!”

He took out the binoculars and stood up through the sunroof. He looked at the man. There was something strange about him, something Davenport couldn’t quite place.

“Identify yourself!” Davenport called out, then said the same in Pashto and Dari, the two major languages of Afghanistan. The man was too far away to hear, but continued to run toward them.

“Just shoot him!” cried out Flowers, the newest member of their squad. Davenport didn’t want to, not yet. He was nervous, too. A patrol being approached could always mean an attack, and other un-friendlies could be hidden around them. Davenport scanned the area with the binoculars. If this was an ambush, he caught no sign of it. He yelled out to the man again. No response.

The man did seem to be yelling something that Davenport couldn’t catch. He was closer now, too close for comfort. Davenport took aim, and at that moment heard what the man was saying.

“Help me! Help me, please!”

“What are you waiting for? Shoot him!” yelled out Flowers.

“Shut up!” said Davenport.

The man approached the vehicle, then dropped to his knees in exhaustion. With a weak but firm voice, he intoned:

“My name is Lee Erwin Wolfe. I’m the Secretary of State of the United States of America. For God’s sake, please get me out of here.”

“D
C is dead,” said Shepard, reading from his computer. “No power anywhere in the city.”

“Then it happened,” Diana Bloch whispered. She sat down on the bed of the suite at the Mandarin. She could only stare at the wall in horror. “Do we have estimates for casualties?”

“We’d need to figure out how many planes were airborne within the blast radius of the device,” Karen O’Neal said. “There could have been twenty, thirty even more. That’s going to be the lion’s share of the deaths. Next is people hooked on some kind of life support, pacemakers. There would be accidents from cars’ electronics going haywire.” She spoke quickly. “And we don’t actually know how big a surge is going to flow through certain electronic equipment—whether a person holding a cell phone against their ear would be electrocuted, for instance. And what about people stuck in vehicles like cars or elevators or—”

“Okay,” Bloch cut her off. “That’s enough, Karen. Let’s all calm down.”

“My sister lives in DC. She has a husband and a son. I can’t call them to know that they’re okay and—”

“Stop,” said Bloch. “As soon as we get communication, we’ll do whatever we can to contact them.”

“Do you think the president was on Air Force One when the EMP went off?” asked Spartan. She was slumped over the desk, fighting back tears.

“No clue,” said Shepard. “All my
goddamn
connections to DC have been severed.” He banged his fist on the hardwood desk, scowled in pain, and then clutched it protectively.

“But someone was warning the public,” said Spartan. “It was on TV, on the radio, on the Internet. . . . Someone managed to warn a lot of people. Maybe the President got away, too.”

“There has to be something we can do,” said O’Neal, tears flowing from her eyes.

“Well, how do we find out about the President?” asked Spartan.

“The flight plan would have been logged,” said Bloch. “It will take the right person to have access to it, and it’ll be hard with DC—and more important, Langley—in the dark.”

Karen O’Neal broke down in sobs. Bloch comforted her with a hand on her shoulder.

Spartan glanced at her computer, and something seemed to catch her eye. “Holy shit,” she said.

“What?” asked Shepard.

“The Secretary’s been found,” said Spartan.

“
What?
” exclaimed Bloch.

“The story’s just being relayed among the agencies,” said Spartan. “Here we go. He was found by an army patrol in Paktia Province. He was in bad shape. Beaten and bloody, dehydrated, walking out in the mountains. It was sheer dumb luck that he happened to run into a US patrol vehicle. He’s on his way back to the country now. One piece of
goddamn
good news in this hell-on-Earth of a day.”

“How did he get free?” Bloch asked.

“They haven’t said,” Spartan said. “Maybe it’s still classified.”

“It is good news that he’s alive,” said Bloch. “Wolfe is a strong figure. Even if the President is alive, he’s MIA. We need someone to bring the country together, to remind people of our shared values, of our responsibilities to one another.”

“What now?” asked Shepard. “We lost. Weinberg won. What do we do next?”

“Are you kidding?” asked Bloch, with anger in her voice. “No, Shepard, we haven’t lost. We’ve lost people, and they will be mourned. Weinberg struck at the heart of our country. But Gunther Weinberg cannot destroy us. He can’t, not without killing every last one of us and every idea that we stand for. We haven’t lost, because our work isn’t done.”

“Bloch . . .” said O’Neal in disbelief.

“No,” said Bloch. “I won’t accept defeat. Now is when we rally our troops, pool what resources still exist, and bring Weinberg to justice while the wound is still fresh. Who’s staying here and fighting?”

The others in the room stared at her blankly. Then O’Neal, swallowing her tears, raised her hand.

“I believe that my sister and my nephew are alive,” she said. “But they were there. They are probably feeling scared and helpless. If I can help, in whatever way I can, I’ll do it for them.”

“I’ll stay,” said Spartan. “Of course.”

Bloch looked over at Shepard. “It’s funny,” he said. “Karen’s staying because she has people, but I have no one, really. No family, no friends that I care about that much.” He sat up straighter. “But that’s exactly why I’m staying. I won’t do any good anywhere else.”

“Then it’s settled,” said Bloch. “We stay here and we work through this. Shepard, I want you to reestablish a link with DC. Langley in particular. Spartan, you’re on communications. I’m going to give you a list of people to contact, and you’re going to get in touch with them. O’Neal, get me data. The more we know about this, the better.” Bloch took a deep breath. “We need to be another line of defense when others have failed. A lot depends on what we do. And it’s far from over.”

S
uspended below his parachute, Morgan floated toward the pitch-black ground of the Washington, DC, region. As his eyes grew accustomed to the light of the moon, he was able to make out individual features of the landscape. He had seen two passenger airplanes fall out of the sky when the EMP was deployed, and the flaming wreckage of another one that had been behind him. As he drifted, all he felt—apart from the pains and aches of being tossed like a ragdoll first by the plane and then by Anse Fleischer—was how powerless he was to help anyone.

The wind carried him to a developed suburb, which posed many dangers for landing, from roofs to trees to pools and even power lines, which though not currently electrified could tangle his chute and leave him hanging.

Morgan steered into the middle of a street. He landed first on a stalled car, putting a sizable dent on the roof, but was carried upward by a gust of wind. He hit the asphalt a few yards ahead, barreling down on his feet and then stumbling to his knees. He released the parachute, and it flew away like a giant bat, carried by the night’s winds. Having made sure that he was still in one piece, he stood up and looked around.

A few people had emerged on the streets and were offering to help others. Some were trying to profit from the situation, as in the case of a man who had set up a portable gas stove and was offering to rent it out to people who had electric stoves at home. Just down the street, another man seemed to be offering the same thing for free. Many who were out in the streets looked scared and aggrieved, but more seemed to be helping.

He passed one young man who offered assistance—Morgan certainly did look in need of first aid, he realized, but he declined. He heard the same young man offer help to the next person he crossed. Another was holding a clipboard and trying to figure out if there were any dead, and whether people needed anything.
This is America,
Morgan thought with a warm glow.
Neighbors helping each other out.
An old man approached him on the sidewalk.

“It’s all blacked out,” he said. “People are saying it might be World War Three. Like we’re being invaded. But I don’t see any enemy bombers.”

“It’s not World War Three,” said Morgan. “You’re going to be fine. We’re all going to be fine.”

Morgan ran down the street, looking for the thing he needed most: transportation. Modern cars depended on electronics to start and run, and all of those would be as good as gigantic paperweights. He’d have to find a car from the eighties or earlier. He dashed, block by block, looking for a car that might be functional.

It took him about ten blocks, but he knew it was the one as soon as he had seen it. It was a 1969 Camaro, vivid red. He looked up and down the street, seeing no one. He had to work fast. The owner might be watching from a window.

Morgan took off his tuxedo jacket and wrapped it around his elbow. “Sorry,” he said, and shattered the glass of the back driver’s-side window. He reached into the car and unlocked the driver’s side door.

Once behind the wheel, he reached toward the backseat and found an ice scraper, which he used to pry open the cover under the steering wheel. He stripped the wires with his teeth and touched them together. The car came to life.

Morgan laughed out loud when he shifted into gear. He set out. It was slow going in that area, as he had to maneuver around countless vehicles that had stopped dead in the middle of the street. He apologized under his breath for every yard he ran over, every lawn ornament and bush he crushed.

He found his way to the highway north. Police were already shutting down the way
into
DC, but nobody thought of closing off the way
out
of it. Morgan had the highway to himself for several miles northward before he found working electricity again. He stopped at a gas station and used the pay phone to call Alex, who had Conley’s phone.

“Did you make it there?” he asked. “Are you with McKay?”

“Jesus, Dad, are you okay? I heard that the EMP was detonated, and Washington’s in the dark. Is that true?”

“It’s true,” said Morgan. “A lot of people were hurt. But I’m okay. I’m coming for you, okay honey? But I need you to do something for me now.”

“Shoot, Dad.”

“I want you to send out a message to Zeta,” said Morgan. “Lily can help you with that. Tell them what happened, and that I’m alive. I’ll be there in a few hours.”

T
he TV was on in the makeshift Zeta headquarters at the Mandarin Oriental, and everyone was glued to the screen. The Secretary of State, newly returned from captivity, was preparing to go before the cameras. A news anchor was offering regular updates on information out of DC. No one had yet found the President or the Vice President. The Speaker of the House had been killed at Liberty Island, and president pro tempore of the Senate Lana McKay was missing.

“McKay’s alive,” said Bloch, coming in from the hallway. “So are Morgan and Lily Randall. Lily has McKay and Morgan’s daughter somewhere safe and secret, and Morgan was in DC when the EMP hit. He’s on his way north now.”

“Wait, hold on,” said O’Neal. “Shh. Listen.” She pointed at the TV.

“The line of succession in case of the death of the president,” said the blond news anchor, “goes vice president, speaker of the House, president pro tempore of the Senate, and secretary of state. If those missing government officials have indeed been killed, then Secretary of State Lee Irwin Wolfe will be our president.”

“It’s a good thing Wolfe’s alive,” said Shepard. “The next in line was Secretary of the Treasury. Not exactly inspiring.”

“But even if the President and the Vice President are dead, McKay’s still alive,” said Spartan. “It’s a moot point.”

“Yeah,” said O’Neal. “But you don’t think—”

“Are there any leads on Weinberg’s location?” asked Bloch.

“Not a thing,” said Shepard. “But we do have a silver lining in terms of communications. They’re flooding working satellite broadband devices into DC. They’ll allow people at least to send messages to their loved ones, and to get government agencies up and running again, even if at severely limited capacity. Meanwhile, we have helicopters scouring the area for the President and the VP.”

“Good,” said Bloch. “Meanwhile, the search for—”

“Listen!” cried out O’Neal. “It’s all starting to make sense. It’s coming together, just be
quiet
for a second.”

Everyone sat in stunned silence as Karen O’Neal scrunched up her face deep in thought. “Weinberg’s plot,” she said. “It’s an attack on the presidential line of succession. The President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, President pro tempore of the Senate, and the Secretary of State.”

“So Weinberg wants the US President to be the Secretary of the Treasury?” asked Shepard.

“Sounds like a plan to weaken the US by elevating to the presidency a person who has none of the relevant experience,” said Bloch.

“No! No! Listen,” O’Neal said. “Secretary of State Lee Irwin Wolfe. He was the first. Why was he the first? And why was he
kidnapped?
Why does he return a hero at the exact moment when the nation most needs one?”

“The Secretary . . .” Bloch didn’t finish the thought.

“Exactly,” said O’Neal. “The thought had occurred to me before, but all suspicion had been deflected by the fact that he had been abducted. But it was all orchestrated perfectly, to give him the perfect opportunity to seize the presidency.”

“It makes sense,” said Bloch, her eyes wide with the realization. “How does Weinberg fit in?”

“He wants a US President in his pocket,” she said. “Someone he could blackmail and control.”

“Well, terrible as it is,” said Spartan, “It’s not quite so bad, is it? I mean, we know Senator McKay is alive, and for all we know the President and Vice President are, too. Let Wolfe have his speech. It’s only a matter of time before evidence of this gets out.”

“Yeah,” said Shepard. “Except . . . Weinberg’s not out of the picture yet, McKay’s in hiding, and the whereabouts of the President and VP are unknown.”

“You’re saying—” began Bloch.

“He may try to kill them yet,” said Shepard.

“We need to warn Cougar,” said Spartan. “McKay needs more protection. She needs to be brought in, she needs to be on TV. Everyone needs to know that she’s alive!”

“You’re right,” said Bloch. “This needs to happen as soon as possible. I’m going to get Cougar on the phone. Finding Weinberg is back to being our number-one priority.”